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The middle Sunday of the 2024 Olympics drew in the second largest daily audience the Paris Games have seen to date.
Sunday’s coverage — which saw team U.S.A. score medals from Noah Lyles, Suni Lee and Bobby Finke — brought in 35.4 million viewers, according to fast national data from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics. Viewership for the second Sunday of competition more than doubled the 17.4 million viewers that tuned in to the comparable Sunday of competition during the Tokyo Olympics.
The Paris Olympics’ opening Sunday currently holds the largest daily audience of the 2024 Games with a whopping 41.5 million viewers, which nearly doubled the audience for the Tokyo Olympics’ opening Sunday of competition. For reference, the opening ceremony brought in 28.6 million viewers last Friday.
As expected, viewership for the Olympics was down slightly during the week, though the U.S. women’s gymnastics final boosted Tuesday’s Olympic coverage to reach 34.7 million viewers across NBC, Peacock other NBCUniversal platforms. By Saturday, coverage reached 34.6 million viewers, and rebounded even more to exceed 35 million viewers on Sunday.
On Peacock and NBCUniversal digital platforms alone, the Olympics reached 4.4 million viewers on Saturday and 4.5 million viewers on Sunday.
Sunday’s competition saw Lyles win the gold in the 100m race while Lee won the bronze medal on the uneven bars. Team U.S.A. scored three medals on the final day of swimming, with Finke leading the way with a world record in the 1500m.
Within the first 10 days of competition, the Paris Olympics are averaging a viewership of 33 million when combining Paris primetime (2-5 p.m. ET) and U.S. primetime (8-11 p.m. ET/PT). As has been the case, the Paris Games are averaging a bigger audience than the Tokyo Games, with the 10-day average up 80% when compared to the 18.3 million viewers brought in during the same timeframe by the Tokyo Olympics.
The Olympics continues to boost ratings for NBC News, with “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt,” which sees Holt hosting the news program from Paris, averaging 7.66 million viewers in the first week of the Paris Games, outpacing ABC’s “World News Tonight” by 199,000 viewers. For the first time in nearly six years, “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt” marks the No. 1 most-watched evening newscast in terms of total viewers and all key demos, excluding ties.